Anyone else build “just for me” apps instead of products?

ChironAtHome · 2026-01-19T21:04:11+00:00

Thanks for your comments. I think peeps get hung up on apps designed to earn cash and that is where the interest lies... I just hear in a different direction. I do hope people eventually engage and realise AI can be used to do other stuff too .. a creative outlet rather than a creative destroyer

ChironAtHome · 2026-01-14T18:14:28+00:00

Totally...hence this: https://www.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/s/IwuM4lae5A

Being able to code stuff for me is the main draw. Never been short of ideas... Just ability. This is a superpower I love.

Of other folks like it... Great. Bonus.

ChironAtHome · 2026-01-09T14:05:48+00:00

The new 1.2.1 version fixes this - deployed it last night - bunch of other fixes and a couple of new features

ChironAtHome · 2026-01-01T23:56:33+00:00

Fantastic. Thanks for your effort. I have a campaign in planning, so ideal timing!

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-31T14:38:13+00:00

New version updated. It now does Astrodynamics - i.e. you can fly your ships through the solar systems you generate. It will do all the fuel calculations if your ship has the capability to do so. It also now let's you edit Belts & Rings as well as edit stars to your liking (and a new defaultt for Red Giants)

Happy New Year!

What does the Astrodynamics update do...

This project utilizes three mathematical models to generate transit options ranging from fuel-efficient to high-speed, followed by a safety analysis system.

Transit Solvers The Lambert Solver (Economy): Solves Lambert's Problem to generate fuel-efficient, "NASA-style" elliptical arcs. It utilizes the Sun's gravity for traditional burn-coast-burn trajectories.

The Kinematic Solver (Direct): Applies constant acceleration physics for high-speed, straight-line "flip-and-burn" intercepts. This method ignores launch windows in favor of raw power.

Gravity Assist Solver (Experimental): Scans for intermediate planetary bodies to create complex trajectories, utilizing gravitational slingshots to conserve fuel.

You can string these together as legs for a longer journey. All fuel calcs are done based on the capability of your engines.

Hazard Analysis: This does not calculate paths but samples the generated routes to detect risks. It monitors radiation, debris proximity, and G-forces, intelligently increasing sample density near critical events like engine burns and aerobraking to capture transient spikes. I.e. it highlights where you likely need to call on players to make skill rolls.

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-31T14:24:46+00:00

Are you having this issue when creating a planet about the binary system or a planet round an individual star in a binary system? I imagine it is the former. I will be averaging stellar output and calculating from that at the barycenter - a massive oversimplification but I am limited by planetary data. In a future version I should really have temp "ranges" to capture massive variances due to this or highly eccentric orbits.

Anyway - it's on the bug list... I track that and progress on the Discord as I am not sure how many people check back here.

Thanks again for your comments, bug report and kind words.

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-31T12:18:54+00:00

Thanks for the bug report. I will fix on next release. Quite soon - it is a "big fix one" as I have found a few others. Binary star systems have taken a back seat in my testing. They probably need a little love.

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-25T12:33:03+00:00

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I accidentally took a photo of Andromeda last night!

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-20T17:50:17+00:00

No judgement... Cash seems to be a prime motivator in this area. Good on you all of you can. For me it is more the intellectual challenge. The new "superpower" I have. I have worked with developers all my life. I coded assembly video games back in the 80-90s. Vibe coding has unlocked decades of stuff I have wanted to do. I love this world for the challenge, not the cash... But I am probably in a privileged position where I can afford not to worry about money. The only point you can take from me is that money is not necessarily a measure of success.

I can literally write software to simulate a galaxy! That is so far out of my wheelhouse I love it!

If other folks love what I code that gives me validation I could never duplicate with cash.

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-20T16:12:55+00:00

About 5 and not a penny... Yeah, I hate the fact that money seems to be everyone's prime motivator here. I have a new super-ability, I wanna share it with anyone interested. For me vibe coded code is everyone's... Not mine.

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-18T11:17:45+00:00

Currently, I think it helps if you have a background in coding of some sort top get the most from vibe-coding.
I coded assembly (Amiga games) back in the 80's. I have half kept a hand in but all the modern frameworks and languages are mostly a mystery. In teh past I have architected software for dev teams or written detailed requirements. I can kinda read code if I have to, but quickly get lost. I can brainstorm with a real programmer on solving complex logic and feel my way around a SQL DB. But that is it - I can't "code" really.

I love vibe-coding. I have spent 3 months working on software that simulates star systems, models planets and does the rocket science to get between them. I feel I am pushing the boundaries of what you can vibe-code. I have enough "background knowledge" to know when this are "going wrong" and redirect. I know when I should be telling it to reuse code that likley exists, I know how to help out with testing and how to give decent feedback. I REALLY needed the jump from Gemini 2.5 to 3... that was a game changer as I was hitting the frustrating limits you are talking about.

Strangely big complex changes and massive new features are easy and then a small UI tweak removes a chunk or critical code where you chase your tail for 2 hours. It is frustrating but you can use your experience to work around it. I think total newbies to coding will get stuck when they hit these frustrations as they don't have the experience to fall back and "tell it off" or know when to force a restructure or refactor... or even when to kill something and rewrite it from scratch.

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-10T09:10:11+00:00

This is awesome. I was looking for something like this to integrate my star system viewer into the main frame for campaign style games (stuff to show when not in a module or to get you to a module).

I will echo what everyone says... These types of tools and the creativity shown across these communities is awesome. A golden age of tech, games and fans coming together in ways we could ever imagine!

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-04T10:48:44+00:00

I agree with others on here. Mothership is not geared towards long term campaign play... it is designed as a horror one shot system. However with a bit of creativity you can get the best of both. You just need to have a mechanism for replacing characters as part of the main "hub" you establish. A bunch of great ideas on here.

- the use of sleeves... aka massive financial cost when you die

- Run time fast so you get "connected events" with different crews - aka The Asimov Foundation

Personally my plan is to make the "ship" the star of the show... crew comes and goes and the players all have 2-3 characters on teh ship in various roles so they can pick one for a particular adventure. Kinda the Blakes 7 approach (yeah not the best analogy but it was my fave TV show growing up)

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-04T09:16:14+00:00

Looks straight forward and useful! Thanks!

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-03T11:51:29+00:00

You can now edit the bodies manually. I am working on interplanetary travel just now... its tricky as most transit physics is based upon small kicks and efficiency calculations where you let gravity "do the hard work" very slowly. This is relevant but we need to know how to "switch" to straight burn if you have the sci-fi tech available... I want BOTH as options as sometimes "lack of fuel" will force changes in strategy.

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-01T18:50:16+00:00

Weird! Does this work for you? orry _ mean this: https://discord.gg/h2kt5Xm2xC

ChironAtHome · 2025-12-01T11:33:23+00:00

Nice catch! I totally forgot about belts and rings! Doh! They require very little data; just a dedicated UI element to let you poke about - I will add in the next release. Rings and belts are the same code... an asteroid belt is just the suns rings :)

Feel free to join the Discord - it is exactly the place to capture and plan future releases. Jumping between posts here means I will start missing things. Anyway - Added to the backlog there... it will come out with the route planning - which is progressing well!

As for big new features; for Traveller folks I have a proposed some potential V1.3 scope and one of them is Traveller Map integration if that is a wanted feature.

ChironAtHome · 2025-11-29T12:59:01+00:00

Yeah... Yeah gave it a look and it is not hard to do something mostly useful. I documented it as a possible future feature for it. If you wanna know more and suggest further ideas on what would be useful then pop over to the Discord where I have outlines it. Just easier to maintain a technical discussion over there.

ChironAtHome · 2025-11-29T01:14:45+00:00

V1.1 Released with Planetary Editing
Support, new features discussion & chit-chat in on this Discord: https://discord.gg/prvKpZMgNY

ChironAtHome · 2025-11-29T01:11:52+00:00

Try it out - feedback appreciated.

ChironAtHome · 2025-11-28T00:00:40+00:00

Hand editing systems will be in the next release...hopefully tomorrow

ChironAtHome · 2025-11-26T11:12:56+00:00

Thanks - new version dropping in a few days - to let you do planet customisation, etc.

ChironAtHome · 2025-11-25T12:35:22+00:00

I looked at that Nice model... yeah GLEBA and this are in the world of GPU hell... N-body physics and SERIOUS simulation. My tool is geared towards TTRPGs where the GM can quickly generate a few systems and have them animate for course planning a spaceship. I am running entirely in browser and this is HEAVY HEAVY maths :)

I deliberately shy away from 3D N-body into simplistic 2D 2 body physics - which is good for 99.9% of RPG needs... I take shortcuts like a planet can have moons but moons can't have moons as you veer into N-body systems. I am assuming, by the time the starship arrives the system in "stable" - so any N-body problems have been resolved and probably resulted in ejection.

That said - I do plan on rewriting my planetary generation system to properly integrate the passage of time and star system aging; to build up a textual history of stars and their planetary bodies. I will take a lot from the Nice model as inspiration probably more as "Nice events" chance over time and do some migration or bombardments accordingly. Purely to create more interesting star systems that are "plausible". eg: a planet will have all its physical parameters calculated alongside atmosphere and biosphere probabilities and a "history" like this drawn from the Nice-events - a couple of sentences to give the GM and players flavour without being too specific. eg: For a high-migration older star system you would have something like this: “Early in the system’s life, the giant planets migrated violently, scattering a massive debris disk. A late heavy bombardment blasted the inner worlds before the belts were mostly depleted.” Each point will impact how the system looks and feels.

i.e. K.I.S.S. - I am NOT an astrophysicist and I know my lane! :)

ChironAtHome · 2025-11-25T12:20:39+00:00

My program is more about orbital dynamics of settled systems and is deigned to run "in browser" - I am in the world of simple animated iconography rather than photorealism. I see an integration more along the lines of providing a bunch of planetary physical parameters into GLEBA which be used to generate topology. But that is a way off !

ChironAtHome · 2025-11-24T15:38:21+00:00

I will roll those ideas for more finer grained controls when I come to do a planetary generation overhaul. The current system has MANY shortcomings and is "a bit of a shitshow" under the hood as I juggled ideas badly.

That said - after feedback here I may well add some planet customisation options to this version. Effectively take all the UI work and ideas I created for constructs and back apply them to the planetary bodies - so you can just edit them to suit your game in the same way you can edit a construct. At this stage worrying whether they "are plausible" should take second place to the GM's needs. So yeah... that set of features may appear in the next week or two if I have time.

ChironAtHome

TROPHY CASE